


not kings nor queens

by JadeClover



Series: star-hewn colossi [12]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Chess, Chess Metaphors, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2018-11-02
Packaged: 2019-08-14 12:37:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16492754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JadeClover/pseuds/JadeClover
Summary: Peddled by mysterious sphinxes, chess is a game with a thousand variations across many thousand worlds. Over millennia, Haggar played hundreds of these with her emperor, but when an old variant stirs up that which is better left forgotten, she must once again contemplate the terrible, undying legacy of the forgotten world that is Altea.





	not kings nor queens

**Author's Note:**

> Haggar and Zarkon have some... Issues about Altea. This isn't even scratching the surface.
> 
> Also, I started this pre-s3 (one of my oldest WIPs, actually) and only now finished it, despite intending to finish it for last year's Haggar Week. Better late than never, I guess?
> 
> For [Haggar Week](https://haggarweek.tumblr.com/), Day 5 - Altea.

Idleness. She _despises_ it.  
  
Her work keeps her occupied most days, most nights, and when the well of her duties runs dry, she must only delve deep into her backlog of topics to study—to study for recreation, that is, though all knowledge she attains inevitably becomes of use to the Empire anyway. Add to that the mundanity of eating, sleeping, and keeping one's mortal shell alive, and she is never without a purpose, though at times that purpose does lack a certain... _immediacy._  
  
When for once the internal list of tasks she could do yields none she truly _must,_ and on the rare night she finds herself disinclined to go searching, she stumbles headlong and unwary into that pit-trap of idleness... and it is not a pleasant sensation. It is restlessness, an instability, an unevenness of the mind and being, and she cannot abide it.  
  
She must find something to do.  
  
As she slots away the last samples of the night, the analyzer secures itself with a series of mechanical clicks. She eyes it with a raised chin and narrowed stare, as though the machine itself is responsible, but it is not. With no impetus from without, the last of her self-given direction finally drains away. The samples require no attention until morning, will suffer if disturbed, and until then, time looms with nothing but uncertainty and a growing sense of unease to fill it.  
  
Boredom often stalks her in the long vargas of the night, when most of her subjects are allowed rest and even her druids find somewhere else to be. If she permits it, ennui will eat at her mind until it plies her too sweetly with inefficient, regrettably destructive ways to sate it... but one other exists who shares the suffocating stasis of the night with her—suffers under it to a greater extent, even—and therein lies her usual recourse. Provided he does not choose this of all nights to sleep, and provided he does not prefer solitude over company, she will visit her emperor.  
  
He occupies himself in his own ways at night, either with unfinished work or advance planning or simple, meditative thought. It is out of courtesy and efficiency that she asks if she may join him. ( _She does not always ask. Sometimes she simply arrives and eyes him until he pays attention to her._ )  
  
A flick of her fingers summons a glowing holo-screen, and with a single keypress, she executes the command that contacts her emperor. This is an indirect form of contact; informally, it is a ping—specifically, one that requests the recipient's location aboard the ship. She knows his location already, of course—his quintessence is bright as a beacon in her mind's eye, and it burns distinctly from the location of his rooms—but she relies upon the second, subtle meaning the ping gained through millennia of habit. Her lord will understand.  
  
_Do you care to be disturbed?_ it asks.  
  
Ticks pass, and then a map returns in the corner of her screen, a small location marker pulsing precisely where she expected it to be.  
  
The answer is this:  
  
_Come._

* * *

  
Red, gleaming visors stare wordlessly to the opposite wall, rifles cradled in mechanical hands. The sentries' programming makes them watchful, observant guards; to sneak by them would be a formidable task ( _for anyone but her_ )... but sneaking implies a degree of stealth, and she slips between their metal forms without pause, no heed paid to the multitude of sensors tracking her every move.  
  
This sector is one of the command ship's most secure, yet she knows the laws of the sentries' programming: _Permit her access. Anywhere. Even here._  
  
_Especially here._  
  
A brightness glows in her mind, one so certain that once ensconced in the sanctum of her lord's quarters, her feet follow its silent call rather than any conscious directive. The lounge—that is where he sits, the miniature star of quintessence that he is. Against the viewport, the faint light of distant suns limns him in gold, the glow of chess pieces on the table casting his face in wan, violet light. With his head bowed, fingers laced before him, the holographic game clearly holds her lord in some kind of thrall.  
  
That look on him is familiar: He _contemplates._  
  
Chess is not always a mode of entertainment for her lord; sometimes it makes a better _distraction._ To pit his mind against something else ( _he told her_ ) allows it to finally work through the true matter at hand, a mire of frustration and knots undone simply by turning away from it.  
  
Odd, is is not, how the mind works? Yet fitting.  
  
Her trailing robes make barely a whisper over the floor, her footsteps near-silent to her own ears. No sound from her will disturb him. Better that surprise aggrieve him later than her presence pull him from his thoughts now—a small, empathic consideration from one habitual thinker to another.  
  
The sharp angle of his ears matches his concentration, that and the set of his knitted brows. What problem spurs his thoughts, or is it some facet of the slow-marching game? The board's pieces sprawl in broken battle lines, the colors a slow-mingling progression of war; deep burgundy symbolizes the traditional black, white a thin, pale blue-violet, and—  
  
Quintiles.  
  
The game is _quintiles._  
  
Her brows pull together as the spread of the board stills every thought in her mind. The pieces array over a field of pentagons, the traditional grid of squares gone from this variant. It is _Altean,_ she knows. They _had_ developed such a love for things coming in fives, had they not? But _why?_ Why does her lord play this when the gathered chess variants of a thousand worlds not yet dead wait ready in his library?  
  
Her hands curl into fists at her sides, and with new intent she studies the set of his jaw, the angle of his brows. _What do you ponder, lord?_  
  
_Is it even the game at all?_  
  
At last he comes alive in the smallest of ways, a roll of his shoulders and a deep, silent breath. That precious moment of animation overtakes him, and though his eyes never leave the board, a tilt of his head indicates the chair opposite. A request.  
  
With a whisper of robes, she moves and lifts herself onto the seat.  
  
Immediately, her eyes narrow, lips twisting in a scowl pride would rather she not show, but her lord's gaze is safely elsewhere—his eyes are on that _game._ Scrutinizing the set of his focused, lowered stare distracts from the uncomfortable, nigh _intolerable_ sensation of legs unable to reach the floor, and only an odd, defiant willfulness keeps her from pulling them up onto the seat with her. ( _Somehow she still forgets, even after all these decaphoebs, how very_ large _her emperor's belongings are._ )  
  
If he will not look up, she finds no reason to avert her gaze. She traces it over the lines of his face, down the dip of plating covering the length of his nose. That and his brows, freed from the shielding confines of his helm—she is the only being permitted to see him as such. By now, the weight of such an intimacy scarcely registers at all.  
  
Her lord's face never wavers from its contemplative frown, and her eyes narrow. What captivates him so? What unshakable claim do the kings, the queens, have on his thoughts? She seeks again the glowing shapes of interlocked pentagons, tracing the familiar, _unfamiliar_ patterns.  
  
...Is the answer even one she wishes to know?  
  
She draws her knees up at last, curling forward in the chair until her chin hovers somewhere between them. A tilt of her head angles her face to the stars, galaxies and nebulae spread out behind the distant rings of the command system and one of the planets through which the constructs of progress have shorn.  
  
She only looks back several doboshes later, and by then her lord is watching her.  
  
Some strange prickle of annoyance sparks at that, turning her scowl deeper and pinning her ears back beneath her hood, but she lets it slip free from her being, drifting off and losing itself amongst the stars; she will not indulge it. If they are to play a game of glance and stare, let it be so. She came here to fill her idle time, and such a meaningless exchange... it leaves her marginally less idle than before, at least, never mind that she knows her patience will soon wear thin.  
  
For a brief, endless tick, she stares into her lord's eyes deep enough to read the softness there— _benign_ —and the emotion, hidden beneath the edge of focus but present all the same. Her ears angle, and her gaze drops to the board. _Quintiles..._  
  
"Were you playing white," her lord asks, so low his voice loses itself in its own tones yet startles her all the same, "what move would you make?"  
  
He asks, and _only_ because he asks does she let herself turn her mind to the board, the pieces, the _game._ ( _Like instinct, like something writ into her very bones, it is_ anathema.) Millennia disappeared into history since her lord last called on her to play this variant, but if she makes the effort, it all returns—the pieces, the movements, the crowns that change the rules. The black king wears the Crown of the Treacherous, the white queen that of Sacrifice.  
  
In her lord's hand, both sides were an even match, this war of turns drawn out by purpose or the sheer, impossible conundrum of outwitting one's own mind. Traps litter the board on every tile she looks; no safe move exists, not any longer. All she must ponder now is which set of claws to step into.  
  
(Claws— _no, the metaphor fails. Alteans have no claws._ )  
  
Her lord watches in silence. His patience is legendary, perhaps for chess above all else, but—unintended—the weight of his gaze curls her shoulders even further, adds a heavy drag to thoughts that already flounder. Her ears twitch, angle back, and in a willful instant she banishes all awareness but that of the board, lets her lord's presence slip away in favor of the task he asked of her, the one she now assigns to herself with all the fervor her stubborn determination can muster.  
  
Having only just stepped into the game, she is at a disadvantage; she _always_ is. When she and her lord play for a diversion, he emerges the victor more often than not—often enough she learned not to take it as a personal defeat. He is made for staring at boards while vargas vanish, for plotting courses with more care than he gives to the deployment of his actual, blood-and-bone soldiers, while her nature better suits more... _tangible_ pursuits. What point is there when the only victory is that of holograms? Chess is merely a game.  
  
Inevitably, often following one dobosh too many of lengthy and fruitless contemplation, one move becomes as good as the next in her mind and she unwittingly forfeits her victory for simple want of effort. She suspects it disappoints her lord at times, but she tries.  
  
This time, she tries harder, sharpening her mind and applying it like a scalpel. Why this of all times? She cannot name a reason. Perhaps it is because now she enters a game in which the pieces are already arrayed like artwork. Perhaps it is because this is what the long, silent vargas brought her lord, a depth of contemplation not even she could break.  
  
Perhaps, this time, it is simply because he asked her to.  
  
( _Or perhaps she is willing, too willing, to play a game._ )  
  
Naming her move aloud, she breaks the silence with it.  
  
Her lord's eyes narrow to violet slivers. "Hmm." His gaze roves over the board though the pieces have yet to move. ( _It is still set as a single-player game; the console waits for his command._ )  
  
She grew used to his silences long ago—let him have them. Leaning back in her chair, she braces her heels against the seat, settles in, and waits.  
  
She need not wait long. Only a handful of ticks pass before he lowers his hands. With a tap of his claw to the input panel, the white queen appears on the tile she indicated. Her lord raises his head, meets her gaze again, and the gleam in his eyes tells her the spell of the game is well and truly broken now.  
  
She has his attention at last. What shall she do with it?  
  
A desire for a diversion brought her here initially—for a reprieve. For companionship, if she will be so honest ( _but it is late and they are alone; she will be_ ). Yet all that has been achieved, and she brought no true topic to discuss, not even a matter of business tucked away in the corners of her mind. How strange it is to be so idle—and to realize that for once she almost wants to be. Odd. Unsettling. _Uncharacteristic._  
  
(Purposelessness. _She despises it._ )  
  
But never mind that.  
  
Tilting her head, she lets her gaze find its way back to the stars, to the constellations of an empire writ in stardust and silent splendor. Another star burns—( _still, always_ )—and this one vies for her attention against all the rest, pulling and tugging in a way its owner would not dare.  
  
Indulgently, obedient to her own truest whims, she goes.  
  
That dull, rippling knot in her lord's quintessence echoes in her own mind, and she sees it, _feels_ it. Tangled in the place where thoughts and emotions lie, the remnants of whatever held his focus for so long ache in the way only late-night musings can. ( _Her lord, at times, is like this—far more than she._ )  
  
"What troubles you, sire?" No need to approach the question—she may be frank. She may be frank any other time ( _and often is, whether she intends it or not_ ), but that is the freedom and the candor of the night. No thrones, no work, no commanders whose too-keen ears might overhear. No crowns but the ones the chess pieces wear. As she speaks, her eyes find his, and she does not look away.  
  
He does. He turns his gaze by habit to the stars, his fingers laced tight in front of him, ears pinning back, loathe as always to admit what he hides. She has no room to condemn such a stubborn pridefulness, a rallying against that which he sees weakness, and she will not press for what he does not give, but nor will she let him be an emperor here. Not a monolith, not a symbol mantled in godhood. _No crowns, sire_ —none but the one he will not remove.  
  
She glances down at the forgotten board. _Quintiles._ Is the game where the answer lies?  
  
The black queen wears the Crown of the Changeless, utterly immobilizing her army of pieces for the crown's duration. A poor draw by the black player—but that unlucky curse loses its sting with the Crown of the Treacherous still on the black king's head, permitting its player to control the enemy's pieces in lieu of their own.  
  
How deep these wars run...  
  
Her lord speaks at last: "This game stirs what best lies forgotten."  
  
_Ah._ "Altea?"  
  
That narrowing of eyes is not quite a wince, but it is a reaction nonetheless, and he allows it of himself. ( _How satisfying that he does. He gives himself liberties. He lifts off the crown._ ) "Yes."  
  
_Altea._ She would not have mentioned it, but the game's very presence put the topic before them from the moment she arrived. That ancient, long-dead world is one of the worst things catching on the still-sharp jags left in her emperor. He tries to hide them, tries valiantly to pretend the barbs beneath his armor do not exist. She does not blame him—but he recalls betrayal before victory, nurses wounds with the ice of the void he tries to plunge history into.  
  
Her teeth grit, pressing against each other as sharp as her thoughts.  
  
Is it quintiles that brings back the memories, or do the memories call him to play it? Regardless, she asks, "Why not play a different game, lord?"  
  
_Lord._ Formal. Had she not meant to shed that? But habit is habit, even here, and though she would have merely called him _sire_ instead, she almost wishes she had. ( _No crowns._ )  
  
A small, short rumble comes from him—discontent. "You know the manner of this, Haggar."  
  
She does not, not entirely, but she knew him as long as she can remember and that is by far enough to imagine.  
  
Her lord extends a hand, takes the shimmering figure of the white king in his claws. The hologram shivers, stuttering, before it catches up to his intent and allows itself to be handled. He lifts it from the board, turns it over, studies it...  
  
...and crushes it to fragments of light against his palm, the shards glittering and falling away to nothing.  
  
Ever-dutiful, the chess piece reappears intact on its square.  
  
_Is that cathartic, lord?_ she wonders. _Or merely futile?_  
  
If she could take some remnant of Altea in her hands—if she could hold it and crush it like her lord does, would she?  
  
How could she, if _she_ is the only remnant of that world and its people?  
  
...She is Altean. Would that time could erase such a thing, but it cannot. She may not remember it, but she saw what its betrayal did, the passive acceptance of its distant crowds— _it had to be done, the only way_ —and the actions of its traitor king. _Altea_ —the very name _burns,_ like a brand, like a scar. ( _She would scrub it from beneath her skin if only she could._ )  
  
On the table, the chess pieces glow like innocent trinkets. _Quintiles._ Such an _unnecessary_ game. Pointedly, she turns her face from the board, fixing her gaze to the slow glide of a passing warship, and as she does she lets her mind break free from the poison of unneeded thoughts, the freefall of a recollection one cannot control.  
  
To dwell on ruin is to invite it back like an old friend.  
  
"Is it not wrong," says her lord, "that a _dead world_ cannot be erased? Is it not wrong that a dead world _still exists_? The Alteans shaped the course of the Empire itself—"  
  
And that is a special kind of treason he utters...  
  
...but the truth. It was an Altean king who thought to destroy what could not be replaced, who suffered in kind for his arrogance, but that does not matter, _cannot_ matter. _There are no kings here, sire, nor queens._  
  
_We are what remains, and like chess, we play for victory._  
  
Her lord laces his fingers before him, his shoulders loosening until the guise of the stoic ruler falls away, the being sat before her no longer a vision of might hewn in steel, instead her world-weary friend again. ( _How she loves him. She does not say it, but it is true._ ) The stars pull his gaze like a lodestone, and hers joins it, and together they fall into a silence as deep and full as the past but not nearly so heavy.  
  
When at last he turns back to the board, the narrowed eyes of before are gone. He looks to her, and his gaze holds only determination again, cool and sharp. "Finish the game with me."  
  
It is not an order but a suggestion, and not an entreaty—an _invitation._ She casts a glance over the board like it is a universe to be conquered ( _and it is, is it not?_ ). "Very well," she says. The notion appeals.  
  
With a tap to the control panel, one of his pieces moves to counter hers. Fitting that he had already planned his next move while they spoke. _Very fitting._ She shifts upright so she can perch and examine the board. The game took the opportunity to select her white queen a new crown, and her white king, within a single move, will lose his Crown of the Guardian. What replaces it will be her choice, and through this and careful planning, she will find opportunities to manipulate the course of the game.  
  
A half-familiar pastime, a night like any other... It soothes her, this dip into a routine she can pretend goes uninterrupted. An unavoidable bitterness still crawls, yes, that it is quintiles, but she can overlook that detail. Boredom brought her here and this will slake it, a game of the mind and her emperor's company. She finds her next move and calls it; the board, now acquiescent to her commands, shifts the pieces.  
  
Time flows on around them, as it always does. The past never changes, but the present remains as malleable as any game. She may prefer reality over chess, but _life, existence, survival, outlasting_ —those are a far better prize than stolen holographic crowns. Give her the crowns of real kings, of dead kings—give her broken worlds to reduce to dust and atoms and memories and then not even that.  
  
She would tear into the universe itself, she thinks at times, if only she could fix what can never be changed, but it matters not. Better to burn it all instead.  
  
Better to take it in hand and make it her own ( _their own_ ), because what could finer than a game won fair against the hand of fate itself?  
  
Altea is gone. She and her lord are not.  
  
They are what remains, and like chess, they play for victory.

**Author's Note:**

> Fun Fact: Alfor was the one who invented quintiles, though the publicized version of the game that became popular on Altea had input from other sources. Zarkon was one of the ones who helped Alfor refine his initial ideas, mostly by playing it with him for hours on end and waiting patiently while Alfor paused to make notes and mutter about logistics.


End file.
